Cape Town Running Out of Water and SA Land Appropriation

One of South Africa’s largest cities, Cape Town, could be the world’s first major municipality to run out of water due to an unprecedented drought.

The city, which is also an iconic tourist destination, has less than a 90-day supply of water left in its reservoirs, meaning residents are forced to ration by taking short showers, flushing the toilet only when necessary and recycling bathing water.

“Day Zero” (or April 22) is when authorities predict the taps will run dry, leaving city officials scrambling to build desalination plants and drill underground water wells.

The drought has been caused by very low rainfall over the past few years and increased water consumption by the city’s growing population.

Cape Town Mayor, Patricia De Lille said its four million residents have to start drastically cutting down on their water. The capped household water usage at 87 litres per person, per day and residents will be fined if they break the rules.

Also weighing heavily in South African news, concerns over uncompensated land expropriation continue to heat up.

South Africa could turn into the ultimate paradise if the implementation of the policy of expropriation of land without compensation leads to higher food production, ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa said in Nongoma, Kwazulu-Natal on Sunday.

“In fact, it is possible for us to begin a process of working the land and improving agriculture – making it a very successful factor in our country,” Ramaphosa said, addressing King Goodwill Zwelithini at Osuthu Palace – explaining the ANC’s decision to implement a policy of land expropriation.

Ramaphosa emphasised that the implementation of the ANC’s policy must not harm the economy, the agriculture sector or food security.

“We can make this country the garden of Eden,” the new ruling party head said at a meeting to introduce the ANC’s new top six leaders to the Zulu king. Ramaphosa said redistributed land must be used productively. He estimated that increased food production could grow the economy by two million jobs…

The fight for the land ownership is reaching heated levels apparently – it’s “war against the Boer Afrikaner people”, the Boer Afrikaner Volksraad had warned the ANC.

The Afrikaner activist group says it will not recognise any law that makes nationalisation of land without compensation legal, even if it comes from parliament.

“Deprivation, dispossession and occupation of our country in terms of any law shall be considered formal acts of war against the Boer Afrikaner people, which we have to defend against and retaliate with internationally accepted means and methods in order to ensure our ownership and recovery,” wrote the organisation in Afrikaans.

This after the EFF on Tuesday called for the expropriation of land without compensation in parliament. The motion was tabled by EFF leader Julius Malema, who called for black people to unite in ensuring that section 25 of the constitution is amended so to make it constitutionally possible to nationalise the South African land without compensation.